Blood Sugar Changes in the Rat Produced by Salt of Beryllium, Magnesium, and Zinc with Some Observations on Hemoglobin and Red Blood Corpuscles

This report is the direct result of research in this laboratory upon the physiological role of several metallic salts. The influence of magnesium salts upon the blood sugar content of rabbits was studied by Underhill (1) who found that hyperglycemia subsequent to magnesium injection was most evident during the period of anesthesia. Meltzer and Auer (2) had shown that an animal anesthetized by an injection of magnesium sulfate could be quickly restored to normal by an intravenous injection of calcium chloride. Underhill (1) showed that the hyperglycemia produced in rabbits anesthetized with magnesium salt was reduced to normal in two or three hours time by calcium chloride. Salant and Wise (3) observed the production of glycosuria in rabbits by zinc salts. They gave results which show that an intravenous injection of zinc malate caused hyperglycemia and glycosuria. These workers report that intravenous injection of calcium chloride did not cause a decrease in the glycosuria resulting from the zinc malate injection. They did not report the effect of calcium chloride upon the blood sugar

Studies on Regeneration of Hemoglobin

Many investigators in the past few years have been interested in the problem of the relation of iron to anemia. This problem originated in connection with studies involving a comparison of inorganic versus organic iron, which later led to studies on the relation of solubility of iron compounds to regeneration of hemoglobin and the treatment of anemia

Further Studies on Lactation and Rearing of Young

The work performed in this laboratory and elsewhere during the past fifteen years has shown conclusively that a diet adequate for growth may not necessarily fulfill the requirements for lactation. The excellent work of Evans and Bishop (1) has conclusively demonstrated that a specific vitamin is required for reproduction. The fact that lactation is not normal on many synthetic and even natural diets suggests the possibility that all of the factors necessary for normal development are not known. The work in this paper was planned in order to increase our knowledge concerning the nutritional factors involved in milk secretion and rearing of young

The Occurrence of Mottled Enamel in Iowa

Mottled enamel is a peculiar condition of the teeth. The teeth become chalky white in appearance and lack the lustre and translucency observed in the enamel of normal teeth. They are generally stained in an irregular manner and the dark brown stain supposedly accumulates between the enamel rods. However, some individuals have severe mottling of the enamel with little or no stain. We do not know the nature of the substance responsible for the stain. The teeth become soft and the dentist experiences difficulty with the teeth retaining fillings. It is not known for certain if mottled teeth decay more readily than normal teeth, but some dentists assert that when dental caries starts in mottled teeth it is difficult to control the process

Growth, Reproduction, and Blood Changes Produced in Rats by Means of Zinc Carbonate

The literature bearing on the toxicity of zinc to the animal body is very confused. D\u27Amore, Falcone, and Marmaldi (1) fed zinc oxide to dogs; they called attention to the loss of appetite and the weak condition of their animals with the further observation that the blood color and the number of red cells were greatly diminished. During the last days of the poisoning, the white cells markedly increased. Urine of the dogs was diminished in volume and contained casts and albumin. Lehmann (2) fed zinc carbonate to dogs for eleven months with no evidence of poisoning. Batchelor, Fehnel, Thompson, and Drinker (3) observed no anemia from administration of zinc. More recent studies have been made by Heller and Burke (4) and Myers, Beard and Broda (5). The latter investigators (5) fed adult rats zinc chloride to the extent of one per cent of zinc and observed that, while the body weight remained constant, the hemoglobin was reduced from 14.3 to 11.1 grams per cent; but the red cells did not change in number. Myers and Beard (6) also found, when zinc chloride was used to supplement iron chloride in blood regeneration, that more than one-tenth of a milligram of zinc daily prolonged the time necessary for the blood to be restored to normal. Keil and Nelson (7) fed two-tenths of a milligram of zinc as zinc chloride daily to rats, without any effect upon the rate of development of anemia

Warped Galaxies From Misaligned Angular Momenta

A galaxy disk embedded in a rotating halo experiences a dynamical friction force which causes it to warp when the angular momentum axes of the disk and halo are misaligned. Our fully self-consistent simulations of this process induce long-lived warps in the disk which mimic Briggs's rules of warp behavior. They also demonstrate that random motion within the disk adds significantly to its stiffness. Moreover, warps generated in this way have no winding problem and are more pronounced in the extended \h1 disk. As emphasized by Binney and his co-workers, angular momentum misalignments, which are expected in hierarchical models of galaxy formation, can account for the high fraction of warped galaxies. Our simulations exemplify the role of misaligned spins in warp formation even when the halo density is not significantly flattened.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap.J.

Instability and `Sausage-String' Appearance in Blood Vessels during High Blood Pressure

A new Rayleigh-type instability is proposed to explain the `sausage-string' pattern of alternating constrictions and dilatations formed in blood vessels under influence of a vasoconstricting agent. Our theory involves the nonlinear elasticity characteristics of the vessel wall, and provides predictions for the conditions under which the cylindrical form of a blood vessel becomes unstable.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures submitted to Physical Review Letter

Endogenous Retrovirus Insertion in the KIT Oncogene Determines White and White spotting in Domestic Cats

The Dominant White locus (W) in the domestic cat demonstrates pleiotropic effects exhibiting complete penetrance for absence of coat pigmentation and incomplete penetrance for deafness and iris hypopigmentation. We performed linkage analysis using a pedigree segregating White to identify KIT (Chr. B1) as the feline W locus. Segregation and sequence analysis of the KIT gene in two pedigrees (P1 and P2) revealed the remarkable retrotransposition and evolution of a feline endogenous retrovirus (FERV1) as responsible for two distinct phenotypes of the W locus, Dominant White, and white spotting. A full-length (7125 bp) FERV1 element is associated with white spotting, whereas a FERV1 long terminal repeat (LTR) is associated with all Dominant White individuals. For purposes of statistical analysis, the alternatives of wild-type sequence, FERV1 element, and LTR-only define a triallelic marker. Taking into account pedigree relationships, deafness is genetically linked and associated with this marker; estimated P values for association are in the range of 0.007 to 0.10. The retrotransposition interrupts a DNAase I hypersensitive site in KIT intron 1 that is highly conserved across mammals and was previously demonstrated to regulate temporal and tissue-specific expression of KIT in murine hematopoietic and melanocytic cells. A large-population genetic survey of cats (n = 270), representing 30 cat breeds, supports our findings and demonstrates statistical significance of the FERV1 LTR and full-length element with Dominant White/blue iris (P \u3c 0.0001) and white spotting (P \u3c 0.0001), respectively

Library preparation methodology can influence genomic and functional predictions in human microbiome research.

Observations from human microbiome studies are often conflicting or inconclusive. Many factors likely contribute to these issues including small cohort sizes, sample collection, and handling and processing differences. The field of microbiome research is moving from 16S rDNA gene sequencing to a more comprehensive genomic and functional representation through whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of complete communities. Here we performed quantitative and qualitative analyses comparing WGS metagenomic data from human stool specimens using the Illumina Nextera XT and Illumina TruSeq DNA PCR-free kits, and the KAPA Biosystems Hyper Prep PCR and PCR-free systems. Significant differences in taxonomy are observed among the four different next-generation sequencing library preparations using a DNA mock community and a cell control of known concentration. We also revealed biases in error profiles, duplication rates, and loss of reads representing organisms that have a high %G+C content that can significantly impact results. As with all methods, the use of benchmarking controls has revealed critical differences among methods that impact sequencing results and later would impact study interpretation. We recommend that the community adopt PCR-free-based approaches to reduce PCR bias that affects calculations of abundance and to improve assemblies for accurate taxonomic assignment. Furthermore, the inclusion of a known-input cell spike-in control provides accurate quantitation of organisms in clinical samples

Contribution of common and rare variants to bipolar disorder susceptibility in extended pedigrees from population isolates.

Current evidence from case/control studies indicates that genetic risk for psychiatric disorders derives primarily from numerous common variants, each with a small phenotypic impact. The literature describing apparent segregation of bipolar disorder (BP) in numerous multigenerational pedigrees suggests that, in such families, large-effect inherited variants might play a greater role. To identify roles of rare and common variants on BP, we conducted genetic analyses in 26 Colombia and Costa Rica pedigrees ascertained for bipolar disorder 1 (BP1), the most severe and heritable form of BP. In these pedigrees, we performed microarray SNP genotyping of 838 individuals and high-coverage whole-genome sequencing of 449 individuals. We compared polygenic risk scores (PRS), estimated using the latest BP1 genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics, between BP1 individuals and related controls. We also evaluated whether BP1 individuals had a higher burden of rare deleterious single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) and rare copy number variants (CNVs) in a set of genes related to BP1. We found that compared with unaffected relatives, BP1 individuals had higher PRS estimated from BP1 GWAS statistics (P = 0.001 ~ 0.007) and displayed modest increase in burdens of rare deleterious SNVs (P = 0.047) and rare CNVs (P = 0.002 ~ 0.033) in genes related to BP1. We did not observe rare variants segregating in the pedigrees. These results suggest that small-to-moderate effect rare and common variants are more likely to contribute to BP1 risk in these extended pedigrees than a few large-effect rare variants